Get Off My Lawn
by Walker-98
Summary: You can't keep a good botanist down. A day in the life of an elderly Mark Watney in the first city on the moon. Crossover with Artemis.


**_Getting a few things out the way: Mark Watney, The Martian, and Artemis all belong to Andy Weir. I'm just having a little fun in his stories. Consider this as a little bit of gap filler. I think this will be a one and done story, but you never know. Maybe I'll revisit it. Also, this story is slightly spoilerish for Artemis, so you've been duly warned._**

 ** _-Walker._**

* * *

 ** _Get Off My Lawn_**

 _"Good morning, Mister Watney. It's 6:00 AM."_

A short buzz immediately followed the softly spoken words. A pause and then the voice continued with, _"Rise and shine."_

The speaker sounded like that of a young woman with a Swahili accent. Her easy-going and gentle words announcing a brand-new day full of opportunities and discoveries. In reality, the voice came from the speaker on a small device sitting on the nightstand next to a narrow little bed in a modestly sized room. This soft-spoken woman echoing out of a so-called Gizmo had never actually existed. Instead, the voice was the combination of multiple samplings of over a dozen Swahili speaking women. Carefully synopsized together to provide the ideal morning alarm clock. Meant to be helpful and soothing for anyone wanting a pleasant rousing from sleep.

It wasn't working.

A groan worked its way out of Mark Watney. He had already awoken just before five am. Some of his joints had been acting up, and despite his comfortable bed and the weak gravity, he had fitfully tossed and turned while trying to return to sleep. He almost made it back to the point of slipping into restful slumber when his alarm had gone off.

 _"Rise and shine,"_ repeated the Gizmo

"Shut up," muttered Mark sleepily as he tried to ignore the device.

 _"Rise and shine,"_ burbled his electronic assistant.

Mark's eyes popped open, and he turned to glare at the Gizmo. Part phone, part tablet, it was a mainstay of everyone in the city of Artemis. Hard to function without one. And the Gizmo was presently a complete pain-in-the-ass.

"I can format your memory drive," he warned the plastic and glass device.

There was a pause. A dramatic one, or so it seemed to Mark, and then - _"Rise and shine."_

"Gah!"

Mark let out a weary sigh and pushed himself into a sitting position. In the 1/6th gravity of the moon, it was a relatively easy task. Yet Mark still struggled. He was tired and not just from the lack of sleep. The pain in his joints was a stubborn reminder that he was no spring chicken. Hell, he wasn't even a sprung chicken anymore.

It was a consolation that if Mark were still living on Earth, he would likely be taking a concoction of drugs for his arthritis and other age-related symptoms. But not in Artemis. The one and only city on the moon. Low gravity, combined with a pure oxygen environment did wonders for Mark's many aches and pains. Most of the time.

 _"Rise and…"_

Mark thumped down on his Gizmo's touch screen and canceled the alarm. "Enough of that," he said as he pivoted in the bed. He had a busy day ahead. His plants were not going to tend to themselves.

Technically that was not true. Aldrin Park had a full battery of sensors and gadgets to watch and support the only garden on the moon. The park was automated to the point of being able to regulate nearly every aspect. Status of the local humidity, soil nitrogen content, ambient temperature, and the sprinkler control system were all just a swipe away on his Gizmo. But Mark Watney, the one-time mighty botanist of Mars, would be damned if he was going to let some machine tell him when to water the grass.

Reaching for his robe and putting it on, Mark then found he could not find his slippers. He glanced around, his tiny apartment did not leave much room to hide. A bathroom and shower to the right, a small kitchen nook to his left, with just enough space left over in his apartment for his battered reclining chair. It was not much, but it was better than those coffins people rented in Conrad Bubble. Barely room to stand up in one of those. Head Groundskeeper for the city (granted he was the _only_ gardener in all of Artemis) paid well.

Looking for the missing slippers resulted in a five-minute search only to discover his dilapidated slip-ons were right next to the corner of the bed where he had left them the night before. Great, on the top of everything he was getting forgetful. Being old sucked.

Going through his typical morning routine helped Mark get his fuzzy brain back into action. A long hot shower helped with the worst of his aches. Felt good, even though the water was mostly recycled greywater. After shaving and brushing his teeth, he padded into the space optimistically called the "kitchen nook" of his apartment. Actually, it was merely a single corner of his squarish room with a few squeezed in cabinets, a small shelf representing a counter with a washbasin, a microwave, and a small refrigerator that Mark depressingly had to bend down to open.

With an unpleasant grunt, Mark leaned over and fell onto his haunches as reached for the handle on the tiny fridge. The door came open with a squeak. Despite its small size, the refrigerator had more than enough space, Mark didn't keep much in the way of refrigerable food. But there was one round item inside that drew his attention. He reached in, grabbed it, and closed the door.

Now the hard part, he had to straighten himself upright.

On Earth (and even on Mars) this activity for an eighty-three-year-old man would be a significant challenge. Not so much on the Moon. Mark was going to cheat a little. He reached down to the floor with his free hand and gave a little push. Not much of one, but in the weak lunar gravity, it had the effect of propelling himself upward. As he rose, he straightened his legs. This left Mark in comical forty-five-degree angle to the floor, with his feet now planted on the ground while his head was heading towards his kitchen sink.

But Mark was a proficient lunar resident. With a slight kick of his foot, he gained altitude and missed banging his head on the counter. On an upper cabinet, he grabbed hold and slowed his accent. He then let the feeble gravity of the moon pull him down to land safely on his feet. His acrobatic feat still cost him, he would have a persistent ache in his back.

"Worth it," said Mark as he studied his retrieved prize, a real orange. Grown in a real orange grove in southern Florida.

It had cost more than a few pennies to get a bag of Valencia's shipped up here. The price was not only for the weight of the fruit but for packaging to keep them in one piece and fresh on their journey to the moon. Not to mention a rather exorbitated import fee for bringing the oranges through customs. He had heard there was some girl in Conrad who ran a bit of a black market in hard to get items. She had a way around such tariff costs. But despite his years, Mark was still a bit of boy scout and dismissed the idea of breaking the law just so he could save some money.

Mark took a seat in his favorite chair and began to peel the orange. He briefly turned the wall mounted tv on and watched a bit of the news. It was the same old same old. Petty politicians, idiot celebrities, war, and crime. He turned the tv off and went about eating his breakfast in peaceful silence.

Finishing his meal, Mark disposed of what remained of the orange into the recycling bin except for the seeds. He had plans for the little pips. With some potting soil and a little bit of patience, he could solve the shipping cost problem. If he could grow potatoes on Mars, no reason he couldn't grow oranges on the Moon.

A glance at his Gizmo showed it to be 7:23 AM. Time to get to work. Mark went about dressing himself in a pair of green overalls, outfitted with nearly a dozen pockets for his tools. Laced up real leather boots and slipped on a set of fingerless gardening gloves. His unofficial uniform was more than a little overkill for his job, but Mark liked playing the part of the cantankerous elderly groundskeeper and dutifully dressed for the part.

At 7:42 AM he marched out his apartment on Bean Up 2, heading to his job. That was a bit of an exaggeration. No one marched anywhere on the Moon, not unless you wanted to look like an idiot. The weak gravity would have someone bouncing off the ceiling if they tried high stepping it. No, all you needed to do to walk in Artemis was make small gentle steps to push yourself along. Even someone as ancient as Mark could move along quite quickly.

His home was in the Bean Bubble, named after Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon. The dome itself was nearly two hundred meters across. Crammed inside were homes, hotels, and shops. Little cubical spaces like Mark's apartment making up a miniature middle-class suburb for the city. Built out of aluminum mined and forged on good old Luna itself. It, along with its brothers Shepard, Conrad, Aldrin, and Armstrong made up the city of Artemis.

"Morning, Mark," called a friendly voice to his left. Turning, Mark saw a middle-aged man cleaning the outside entrance to one of the hotels which lined the ground level of Bean bubble. Mark had chatted with the man a few times before. He was the day-shift manager for the hotel. His name was Greg, or George, or something that began with a 'G.'

"Morning," replied Mark. He looked up at a sign over the hotel's doorway as he tried to place the man's name. The sign read "Moonrise Inn."

"Did you ever think of changing the name?"

The nameless manager blinked at him. "What? The hotel's name?"

Mark nodded.

"What's wrong with Moonrise Inn?" asked the man.

"It's a stupid name," muttered Mark. "We are on the moon. It's the one place where we will never see a moonrise."

"Hah," laughed the manager. "You're a funny old man."

"Humph," grumped Mark as he turned back to continue down the concourse. The morning commute of people walking or taking small electric carts off to work or other tasks were steadily growing, and he did not want to waste his time standing around and explaining orbital mechanics to a moron. His plants needed to be watered.

Mark made his way through an underground tunnel leading him to the Armstrong Bubble. It had been the first constructed for Artemis and was the smallest of the five domes making up the city. Back when he had first moved to the city, still in its infancy, Armstrong Bubble had been the place to be. All the excitement of the first permanent colony on the moon. A hub of activity for the growing city. But now, just a short twenty years later, it had become a smelly, dirty, run-down section of Artemis. Filled to the brim of industrial machinery and manufacturing.

He passed the offices of Sanchez Aluminum where someone inside was yelling loud enough to be heard in the street. Sounded like a mix of half a dozen different European languages combined to make a genuinely dreadful sound. Not an uncommon occurrence in Artemis, where a multitude of different cultures and languages freely mixed. Made for some fascinating conversations. However, Mark paid it little mind, he was in a hurry, and he had heard enough unpleasant rumors about Sanchez that he wanted nothing to do with the corrupt company.

His destination lay ahead - Aldrin Bubble. And it could not be any more different from it's smaller brother Armstrong. The inside of the dome was the pinnacle of opulence and money – the Aldrin Arcade. It was also damn gaudy in Mark's opinion. Wealthy tourists poured their cash into rows of fancy hotels, bustling expensive restaurants, slot machines twinkling with neon flashing lights in more-than-a-little shady casinos, and stores lined with items so expensive they did not bother with price tags. But as extravagant and showy as Aldrin Bubble was, the top four levels of the dome were in Mark's opinion the best thing in all of Artemis – Aldrin Park, his garden.

Of course, the park really wasn't his. It was owned and operated by the Kenya Space Corporation. They ran all of Artemis. Billions upon billions of dollars had been poured into the construction and then on to the continued operation of the city. Of that fortune, a small portion had been spent on hauling nearly a cubic acre of soil up to the moon to provide the ground for growing real Zoysia Matrella. Also known as Zoysiagrass. Or for the more common folk – just grass. Mark had been there since the Aldrin Park had opened. He had spent hours upon hours tending to the seedlings as they grew. And so, by the transitive property known as I-worked-my-ass-off to grow these plants in an environment that was very unearth like, they were his.

Mark passed by nearly empty casinos. It was still early morning for the wealthy vacationers from Earth. Apparently, almost everyone was sleeping in. With light foot traffic, it was easy for him to reach a bank of elevators. Despite the low gravity, Mark did not feel up to climbing the stairs. The elevator would take him straight to his destination.

The doors to the elevator parted, and Mark was surprised by who was already in the cab. Fidelis Ngugi – The Administrator of Artemis. The city's informal mayor. Her colorful headscarf stood out with vibrate yellows and greens against the plainer pantsuit she was wearing. The dhuku did an excellent job of hiding her graying hair, but a few loose ashen strands had managed to escape. She stood alone in the elevator, her eyes distant and unfocused. But in just a heartbeat, she realized Mark's presence and her gaze shifted and she gave him a genuine smile.

"Mister Watney, so pleasant to see you," she spoke in her Swahili accented English.

"Madam Mayor," replied Mark with a nod as he joined her in the cab.

The doors to the elevator closed. "Oh," protested Ngugi, "don't call me mayor, I get enough of that from all our visitors. I prefer the Administrator. A less auspicious title than 'Mayor of the Moon.'"

The elevator began to rise, and Mark gave her a sidelong glance. "People really call you that?"

"You would be surprised what they call me to my face," said Ngugi. "Even more surprised what they say when my back is turned."

"Hmph," mused Mark. "I know how that feels. Had enough titles put upon me. Whether I wanted them or not."

"I suppose you do," agreed Ngugi. "I still remember all the ruckus around you when you came back to Earth."

Mark grimaced. Memories of his return home were decades in the past. And much of it he did remember fondly. A heartfelt reunion with grateful friends and family. Meeting with an endless line of world leaders and other celebrities was fun. But in time the constant media scrutiny and intrusions into his life grew tiresome. "Don't remind me," he sighed. "All that fanfare and publicity ended up being a royal pain-in-the-ass."

Ngugi let a knowing grin spread on her face which soon turned into a gentle chuckle. "Fame is not for everyone. But it has its uses."

"Maybe," admitted Mark. "You seem to know how to make it work."

Indeed, Ngugi had. She had the vision of turning Kenya into a world leader in spacefaring. With the country's location on the equator and Earth's spin, it was the perfect place to launch rockets into space. She had organized the Kenya Space Corporation and grew the company into a multibillion-dollar operation. Then to top it all off, Ngugi had convinced and cajoled dozens of corporations and counties to help fund the construction of Artemis. And she had done it all with a gentle smile and a cunning business sense.

Ngugi made a small sound of agreement with him but said nothing more as the doors of the elevator open to reveal Aldrin Park. The sight never failed to bring a smile to Mark's wrinkled face. Instead of thick walls of reinforced aluminum, the top four floors of Aldrin Bubble were enclosed by massive panes of glass. The entire park was circular in design, with a few gently rolling hills. The glass walls offered an unrestricted view of the other bubbles of Artemis and then beyond the unending gray of the lunar landscape.

Ngugi walked out of the elevator's cab and headed straight for to the edge of the park. Growing a little curious, Mark followed her. As he approached, he saw Ngugi pressed a hand up against the glass surface. The wall itself was thirty centimeters of darkened tempered glass. Temperatures in lunar daylight could hit over one hundred and thirty degrees Celsius. Without the tinted glass, the entire park would quickly heat up from solar radiation.

She must have sensed Mark's approach, for without turning around she spoke out loud, "Less than a foot separates us from a total vacuum. When you think about it, this glass is nothing more than a thin little membrane protecting us."

Mark was quick to the defense of the park. "We've got multiple air shelters if there ever was a breach. We're safe in here."

Ngugi turned away from the glass barrier. "I know," she said with a smile. "I sometimes marvel at the idea that all of Artemis is balanced on a knife's edge." She shook her head. "Down in the rest of the city, deep in walled-off offices, you can almost forget you're on the moon. And how precarious everything really is."

Mark did not have anything to say in response. The Administrator almost seemed to be in some sort of depressed funk. He wondered if he should just leave her alone. But then Ngugi let out a long sigh and appeared to push herself out of her melancholy.

"And how is our little park?" she asked Mark.

"Doing well enough," answered Mark with a mild shrug. "The plants manage in the mild gravity. Everything grows long and spindly, but the overall cell structure is intact. Controlling moister content and CO2 levels is always a challenge. Not to mention a very screwed up day and night schedule."

"Two weeks of sun and then two weeks of darkness, your poor grass."

"Zoysia Matrella is resilient. Can handle a lot of direct sun."

"Hmm," considered Ngugi, "not like we get a lot of cloudy days here."

"No, we don't," said Mark with a smile.

Ngugi made a gradual turn as she looked over the entirety of Aldrin Park. "Everyone," she said, "told me this park would be cost prohibitive. A huge drain on resources. But I didn't care. I loved the idea of building a garden in the entity of an airless, dry desert of a moon. It's like thumbing your nose at the universe."

Mark laughed out loud. It had been a while since he had last done so. And for the moment he could forget about all his various aches and pains.

"Well," said Ngugi with a gentle pat on his arm, "it's been nice chatting with you Mister Watney. Keep up the good work."

Mark smiled as the Administrator walked down the path and returned to a waiting elevator. Sighing to himself, Mark finally got down to work. Despite the precautions he had made, there was a persistent mold outbreak in some of the park's soil. After he was done taking care of the mold outbreak, Mark spent the next few hours patrolling the grounds. Checking on his plants with a careful eye. Yes, he could use his Gizmo to watch over the park. But the fancy device could not let him feel the grass, with the individual blades brushing against his hands, or smell the damp earthy soil as the sprinklers kicked in to water a section of the park.

It also gave him ample opportunity go after more than a few visitors making a mess of things. Far to often, tourists to Artemis were ill-prepared for moving around. While in the rest of the Artemis they were contained in the city's cramped spaces, here in the open area of Aldrin Park they could bounce around like idiots. With the moon's gravity, jumping twelve feet into the air was possible. You would take a few seconds to come back to the ground. And disorientating. Mark had to chase after two kids that were jumping up and down and spinning in the air. Both got sick from vertigo, as their inner ears fought to provide equilibrium in the meager gravity. He was none too pleased when the two kids ended up vomiting all over his grass.

Or the rich twit who decided he wanted to reenact Alan Shepard's famous golfing on the moon. He had paid a ridiculous price to haul an entire golf bag and clubs to Artemis with the express purpose of playing a quick nine in the park. No one had stopped him when they had gone through customs. Shepard had been able to send his ball well over a mile with his swing. What did this idiot expect to happen in the much smaller park grounds? Apparently nobody thought he would be so stupid as to actually try.

He had left a big divot in the ground, a golf ball ricocheting around the park as people dove out of the way, and a fuming Mark Watney. That earned the fool a visit from Rudy DuBois, Artemis's head of security. And prompt deportation on the next departing flight back to Earth.

After cleaning up their mess, privately cursing every vacationer who had ever come to the city, and having a small lunch, Mark made his way to the center of the grounds. The middle of the park held a genuinely realistic sculpture of a cinnamon tree. A real tree was still a bit much to support in the city. Maybe one day, though Mark as he ambled towards the statue.

Leaning against the tree-statue, was a girl in her early twenties. She had dusky dark skin and jet-black hair tied back into a bun. A few loose strands partly covered her face. Probably originally from somewhere in the middle east given her features. In Mark's old age, he might not be so good at remembering names. But he never forgot a face. And he knew this girl. Some time ago he had caught her with a cigarette in hand at this very spot. A _burning_ cigarette. In a highly oxygenated environment around _his_ plants. It was, in Mark's opinion, a nearly unforgivable offense.

"No smoking in the park," he rasped.

The girl turned. She had been looking upward, apparently at the crescent Earth. She blinked once and then frowned at Mark. "Do you see a cigarette in my hand?" she replied with an impatient sigh.

"I caught you once before."

Her frowning deepened. She appeared to remember the incident just as much as Mark. "That was ten years ago," she countered.

Mark might be a rundown old man, but he was not going to take any of her sass. He pointed to his eyes and then back to the girl. "Watching you."

He turned to leave, to let her stew on his warning, but she was not finished with their argument. "Let me ask you something," she said with an insufferable know-it-all arrogance. "Who moves all the way to the moon just to mow lawns?"

A part of him wanted to snap at her and fume over her flippant question. But after spending time cleaning up after motion sick children and a stupidly spoiled golfer. He was too tired. Fatigue squelched any real buildup of anger. Marc felt his old shoulders shrug. "I like plants. And my joints hurt. The gravity here's easy on my arthritis."

He paused and turned to look at Earth. "Once the wife died, I didn't have much reason to stay there."

"Hell of a trip for an old man," she said. She was still mouthy, but some of the bite had gone out of her words.

Mark almost smiled to himself. "I used to travel a lot for work. I don't mind."

An unexpected interruption came as a young man jogged up to them. He was all a fluttering of excitement as he jabbered a greeting to the girl. Mark could easily imagine a neon sign was flashing above his head announcing his infatuation with her. She just rolled her eyes and appeared to either ignore it or be completely oblivious to his feelings.

"Svoboda," she said with slight annoyance, "Someday I'll teach you how to talk to women."

Mark mused that she might be a prostitute. Evidently it had become a bit of thing recently for people to take a roll in the hay on the moon, in the only place that even remotely came close to having hay. He had caught more than one couple going at it on the grass. The last thing his plants needed was someone's sweaty naked ass rolling all over it.

"Hey," said the man named Svoboda as he turned to Mark, "I know you. You're Mike, right?"

These two really had no idea who he was. Well, that was youth these days. If a Gizmo wasn't flashing out a newsfeed to them, they were clueless. "Nope," he said. Mark then shot the girl his most powerful grumpy old man glare. "I'll leave you and your john alone. No sex on the grass."

The girl returned his withering scowl with one of her own. "Try not to age to death on the way home, gramps."

She really was a piece of work. Mark pitied whoever her father was. She must have been a royal pain as a child. Giving up, he turned while giving the two a tired wave and began to walk away. As returned to his work, he muttered under his breath. "Stupid kids…Get off my lawn…"


End file.
